Faith And Collective Trauma 17

I got an email from the security manager for the pacific Centre Mall yesterday. He mentioned that he received word from Nordstrom, the chichi department store about one of his security guards telling a panhandler to leave when he was on public property, the sidewalk, that just happened to be in front of the store. I have already mentioned in another post my communications with the manager of Nordstrom, confirming that it is not their policy to expel beggars from sidewalks even if they are adjacent to their store and that this was a matter to be taken up with the mall and security management, which has nothing to do with their store. The security manager asked me for more details about what happened, then later he responded again saying there had been a misunderstanding, the panhandler was sitting in front of an exit door, the security guard was concerned he could get hit by the door by someone leaving the building and it was for his safety that he was asking him to move away a bit The panhandler, according to the security manager, opted to leave the area altogether. I wrote back, telling him his explanation was plausible, though it didn't make sense of the security guard's defensive and rude reaction to me. Perhaps I was coming across as rude and threatening and, being older, I morphed into his mean and horrible dad for those fifteen seconds or so. This does happen, and likely far oftener than we think. Or the young security guard might have really been telling the poor guy to leave and his explanation to his boss was simply a little white lie to cover his little white ass. I have no way of knowing, and I am conflicted about this, so I am not going to give him the benefit of the doubt, nor am I going to call him a liar, simply because I do not have enough evidence. But the young rent-a-thug's reply to me is still troubling. The tone suggests that he did not want to be seen when he was talking to the panhandler, much less addressed about it. And with the focus being on the lack of affordable housing in this city, a lot of people are starting to see that they themselves are but one or two paycheques from the pavement. It has become bad PR, it seems, to be perceived as poor-bashing, even though everyone still does it. It is just now considered bad optics. Which I suppose is a tiny, tiny step forward. But still, even if what young rent-a-thug is saying to his boss is true, and he's not relying on his shining Nordic good looks as a foil (and it goes without saying that physically beautiful people get away with a lot more than the rest of us) there is still an underlying bad odour in this particular bathroom. No one has heard from the panhandler, who alone can really tell us the truth, and we are less than likely to get his version of what happened. If he did volunteer to leave, as has been alleged, then this is likely his experience of disempowerment speaking, which suggests that even if young rent-a-thug was being as kind as possible, he still likely felt threatened and intimidated and not willing to put up a fight that he is sure to not win. In the meantime, housing in my city remains obscenely unaffordable and a growing number of people living in this city are being faced with a very unappetizing menu of options. Housing still is not being regarded as a fundamental human right, and our crisis of homelessness is still not being tackled for what it really is: a crisis, a humanitarian catastrophe. And the street homeless and beggars still get treated like crap.